Accountant Adventures: Mines bigger than yours

Prajwal is a great photographer

We woke up early and picked up Shekhar and his wife, the plan for the day was to drive 2.5 hours and do a 3 hour hike in a wildlife park and then go and hear some monks in a remote monastery do their afternoon chants. I sat in the front seat and Praj, Shekhar and his wife (I apologize for not including her name, but I know I will misspell it) all sat in the back. The drive was magnificent, every turn of the road would reveal a view more spectacular than the last. I hung my head and arm out the window as far as they would go so that I could take it all in. Not words, not pictures, nothing other than experiencing the views could do justice to the way the hills and mountains look. As I have written earlier, this is rainy season and clouds are everywhere obscuring the mountain views, but it is still so spectacular that I can not even imagine what it must look like when there are no clouds.

Praj and Shekhar were talking about astrology and palm reading and Shekhar said that he knew how to read palms. I had Shekhar read mine and the first thing he said is that I need to take care of my heart. Praj loved this, he is the fat one, I am the fit one and I’m supposed to take care of my heart. Shekhar told me that my future in my career is not yet determined, there are many different options that I can take but regardless of which one I take I will be successful. Praj asked him who would make more money and Shekhar said that Praj would spend more and I would save more. Shekhar also said that I will not meet the woman I will spend the rest of my life with until after I am thirty. Prajwal greatly believes in this stuff and so do many other people, I suppose only time will tell.

The 2.5 hour drive ended up taking over 4 hours and we got there shortly after the monks were supposed to be doing their chants. Unfortunately we had been misinformed and the chants had taken place 2 hours before we thought they were supposed to. At the place we drove to there were two monasteries. One was public and one was private. The private one houses monks that agree to stay in the monastery and have no outside contact for 3 years and 6 months. The time of the monks being in there was almost over and a new batch of monks at the public monastery was preparing to enter for their 3 years and 6 months. On the walk to the private monastery I got a leech on my shoe, luckily it didn’t get on my skin.

Next we headed to Namchi where there are two giant religious statues on two different hills. First we went to the Padmasambhava statue, a giant Buddhist statue that houses a monastery. There were some monks working inside on making a wax replica and they were singing songs and chants. There were only five of them and they were goofing off but it sounded so amazing. We sat down and listened to them for several minutes, the sound of their voices made me feel so relaxed and energized at the same time.

Then we went to the Shiva statue which is on another hilltop that faces the first statue. The Shiva statue is still being built. They are building an entire complex and replicating all of the famous temples of India so that people from Sikkim can visit all of them without leaving Sikkim.

We didn’t make it back to Praj’s place until after 11pm, it was an exhausting day. Next we plan to head to Nepal, if we can get there. There is talk of a workers strike in West Bengal and if that happens it is supposed to be impossible to get anywhere because the taxi’s won’t drive and the restaurants won’t be open.